/əˈpraɪz/
[verb] To inform someone about something, especially to give them important facts or an update about a situation. It is often used in formal or professional contexts.
Every time you 'apprise' someone of the facts, you are literally completing a lesson for them — the word comes from the French for 'to teach'.
The word 'apprise' arrives in English in the late 17th century, carrying the elegant formality of French on its back. It comes from the French verb 'apprendre', meaning 'to learn' or 'to teach', through its past participle 'appris'. The French formed 'apprise' as a causative notion — not merely learning something yourself, but causing another person to learn it, bringing them up to speed. This sense of deliberate, directed communication is baked into the word from the very beginning.
Travelling further back, 'apprendre' itself descends from the Latin 'apprehendere', which meant 'to grasp' or 'to seize' — both physically and mentally. Latin 'apprehendere' combined the prefix 'ad-' (meaning 'towards') with 'prehendere' (meaning 'to take hold of'). So to learn something, in the original Latin sense, was to mentally grab hold of it — a wonderfully vivid metaphor for the act of understanding. Latin 'apprehendere' → Old French 'aprendre' → Middle French 'apprendre' → French past participle 'appris' → English 'apprise'.
This Latin root 'prehendere' is surprisingly productive in English. It gave us 'comprehend' (to grasp fully), 'apprehend' (to seize, or to understand with a note of anxiety), and even 'apprentice' — a person who is in the process of being taught, quite literally someone in the grip of learning. Each of these words preserves a slightly different angle of the original idea of mental or physical grasping.
When 'apprise' entered English around the 1690s, it settled quickly into formal and official use. Soldiers were apprised of orders. Officials were apprised of developments. The word carried an air of seriousness and deliberate communication — this was not casual gossip but considered, purposeful informing. That tone has never really left the word, which is why it still feels slightly elevated and professional today.
One persistent confusion in modern usage is between 'apprise' and 'appraise'. The two look and sound similar, but they are quite different in origin and meaning. 'Appraise' comes from Old French 'aprisier', meaning 'to set a price on', and is related to words like 'price' and 'praise'. To appraise is to evaluate or estimate the value of something. To apprise is to inform. Mixing them up is one of the most common errors in business writing, which is a reminder that words with a shared surface appearance can lead us quietly astray if we do not look closely at what they actually mean.